Over the past twenty years, companies have shifted significant marketing and customer support resources to web-based applications. As a result, it is not uncommon for a consumer's entire interaction with a company to occur via the web. This may include, for example, searching for a desired product or service, reading reviews, submitting questions via email or online chat, making the purchase, and receiving customer support. While the technologies and systems that facilitate these transactions have certainly been transformative, there still remains a need for human interaction.
In such cases, call centers provide the first “live” point of contact between a consumer and a company. Various systems and methods have been implemented to increase the efficiency with which incoming calls are processed. For example, number recognition systems may route a call to a particular call center based on its geographic association, and automated menu systems (e.g., “press or say ‘one’ for calls regarding new reservations”) can direct incoming calls to particular agents or departments within a customer service organization.
Nonetheless, consumer interactions with automated and semi-automated customer service call centers remains difficult for many consumers, is expensive and inefficient for the companies, and the much of the contextual information that may be harvested from the interactions is lost.